RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
FEATURE SPONSOR
ACTIVE HEAVE
INNOVATIVE SYSTEM DESIGN AND INTEGRATING ACCUMULATORS Steve Smith, Marine and Offshore Sector Manager at Bosch Rexroth, says by innovative system design and integrating accumulators into the active heave compensation control process, end users could achieve energy savings of up to 75%.
HOW TO ACCUMULATE MORE ENERGY SAVINGS
With oil becoming harder to exploit and prices increasing, operations are moving into deeper waters. Active heave users need to move towards more energy efficient solutions as subsea activity needs more power to deploy the equipment to reach these hidden depths.
With the days of easily accessible oil and gas fields becoming numbered, offshore operations are being forced to operate at increasing depths and harsher environments, putting new challenges on the equipment used. Crane and winch drives are having to position loads of more than 250 tonnes on the ocean floor, stretched to their limits at depths below 2,500m.
CONTINUOUS MOVEMENT Vessels at sea are continuously moving with the ocean swell and vertical motion in particular has significant effects on subsea lifting operations. This makes it difficult to deploy and place loads on the ocean floor whilst protecting vital umbilical cables and the equipment itself from damage during harsh seas conditions.
Ideally, subsea lifting operations would be completed at times when sea levels and weather patterns are placid. But, as the demand for energy increases, companies are increasingly being forced to operate at lower depths and in harsher sea conditions, putting a huge strain on energy resources due to the demands for much higher powered equipment to operate during these conditions. For example, a typical 50 tonne knuckle boom crane operating in waves of over three metres, will consume two megawatts of electricity per hour, a very costly operation.
This has led to an increased demand for fast acting, dynamic and responsive active heave compensation systems, which not only compensates the motion, but also works as a form of energy recovery, reducing the energy usage.
DYNAMIC SYSTEMS One way of reducing energy consumption is to install a secondary-controlled drive which senses the torque at the winch either positive or negative associated with a large auxiliary hydraulic system with a bank of accumulators, producing a highly responsive system using the minimum of power. These very successful and efficient secondary control solutions that compensate for 95% of vessel movement have been supplied by Bosch Rexroth to many companies worldwide.
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www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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